Editing Warship (section)

===Ship Types===
*'''Ironclad''': The first modern ship that one would recognize as being distinct from Age of Sail ships; Ironclads were steamboats that were covered in a layer of iron that could block most cannonballs. They were invented during the early 19th century with England and France locked (as ever) in a dick measuring contest over who had the best fleet. The french were losing so they created the first ocean going ironclad: ''Gloire''. But it was during the American Civil War that Ironclads had some of there first 'field tests'.' experiments against another full industrial nation (during the first Opium war the British Ironclad ''Nemesis'' went to down on the Qing dynasty navy). Iron Clads were used extensively during the American Civil War and it had the first battle between two Ironclad ships: the Confederate CSS Virginia, which was a conversion of a pre-existing ship (the frigate USS Merrimack) that had been converted simply by adding some metal armor with a sloped dome over the deck, and the Monitor, which was a purpose-built design featuring a rotating turret with two guns rather than the standard broadside gun arrangement. The clash between two at the Battle of Hampton Roads war showed something two things that interested naval designer: namely that the two ships could not hurt each other as they mostly just bounced shells off each other's armor and secondly that the Virginia (Merrimack but there is some skub about the names) rammed and sunk another ship USS Cumberland. The end result was that it was though that armor had exceeded guns and that the best way to destroy another ironclad was to ram it, almost upto world war one battleships had rams on them, though as gun improved the rams were obvious dropped as a weapon, though as the Occasional U-boat learned, a few thousand tons of ship can do a lot of damage on impact! Ironically, the first British battleship built without a ram (partially because of the pre-Dreadnought battleship HMS Victoria sinking after a collision with the HMS Camperdown during an exercise) was HMS Dreadnought which despite the revolution it brought in ship design only got to sink one target in its career, a U-boat in World War 1. By ramming it.
**'''Monitor''': on the subject of the Monitor, Monitor class warships are somewhat lightly armored ships but with really big guns. They were primarily designed to take on other ships, but as ships got larger and larger, monitors did not see as much use past WW1 compared to other, more popular ship types. First used in the US Civil war, served until WW2, and still lingered around until the late 60s, monitor class warships were a type of ships built for coastal or shallow waters, often with one or two rotating turrets. Mostly ended up being used to shell shoreside troops rather than engage in any set piece battle. Brazil operates the last monitor to patrol the Amazon River, though in theory any coastal/riverine vessel big enough can be termed as one.

*'''Torpedo Ram''': the torpedo ram dates from an odd part of naval history when Torpedos were first invented, were powerful, but were very short ranged. The ram's job was to use high speed and it's low profile to get up to a target and jam a torpedo down it's throat, while they were still in the harbor. To do so it had to first ram through harbor defense, hence the name. Needless to say, Torpedo Rams were not even all that well liked even when they were being built and so no designs survived past the 19th century. The most famous Torpedo ram is the Fictional "HMS Thunder Child" which fought the Martians in the War of the Worlds.

*'''Distilling Ship''': A support ship who's primary goal is to treat vast quantities sea water into usable drinking water for it's allies, on both the ground and sea. Being a non-combat ship, their armament would be light such as a few anti-aircraft guns or one or two naval guns to ward off light ships. Advances in technology allowed almost any modern naval vessel to do this themselves, removing the need for a dedicated distillery. Some research has gone into using decommissioned nuclear vessels to supply water to cities, though it hasn't yet taken off and would move this ship type to a purely civilian role.

*'''Fast Attack Craft''': Small ships designed to fight in coastal waters and small bodies of water, they're limited to these areas as the lightweight construction of FACs means they can't survive turbulent storms or long-range patrols in open water. This typically includes Patrol boats, Gunboats, Missile Boats, Minelayers, smaller Minesweepers and Torpedo boats. FACs are not terribly well-armed, a modern specimen is typically only armed with a single naval gun within the 70ish-mm range, a few anti-ship/air/ground missiles, and heavy machine guns. If they’re feeling thrifty, the crew might consider carrying sea-mines or torpedos. Patrol boats that are designed to guard smaller waters like rivers and streams are typically only armed with one or two heavy machine guns, although the crew may opt to bring a rocket launcher along for anti-vehicle needs. 
*'''Mine Warfare Ships''': Naval mines are an ever present threat to ships and purpose built minelayers and minesweepers are present in many navies, though corvettes, frigates and destroyers frequently double up as minelayers as well. There are three different kinds of minesweepers. Regular minesweepers clear an area én masse with no prior detection of mines. Minehunters are designed to detect and take out individual mines. Mine countermeasure vessels can do both duties at the same time.

*'''Corvette''': The smallest "proper" warship, as in, being able to survive combat in open water. They are used as convoy escorts, or light Helicopter carriers. No modern coast guard operating on an ocean is one without these.
*'''Cutter''': Technically warships, these are employed largely as customs and patrol vehicles by coast guards and law enforcement. A large portion of their size is often devoted to carrying helicopters, such as those that carry the US Coast Guard's HITRON teams. Ranging from the size of FAC’s to frigates, some major powers build them with extra space to install better sensors and missiles if a major war occurs. China has a few special very big cutters for the People's Armed Police Coast Guard designed for ramming and collisions in the South China Sea to harass other claimants, while America likes it's cutters big in general because of the massive coastline and the Coast Guard taking it's fair share of the insane yearly military budget.
*'''Frigate''': Better armed than a corvette, Frigates are escort ships designed mainly for protecting convoys in heavy combat. Most modern navies use mostly frigates, especially if they lack aircraft carriers. The term "frigate" is sometimes used as a catch-all term for Destroyers, Corvettes, and Cruisers, to differentiate them from "Capital" ships such as battleships and aircraft carriers.  

*'''Destroyer''': A fast escort ship designed to intercept Torpedo boats, there original name was 'torpedo boat destroyer' and was just shortened to 'destroyer' after they became the very thing they swore to destroy, used to chuck torpedoes left and right in World War 1 and to a greater extent 2. Nowadays as light ships they also get anti submarine duties, which majorly started in World War 1 and matured in 2. If the [[wikipedia:Zumwalt-class_destroyer|USS Zumwalt]] is anything to go by, they may be the first ships armed with functional rail gun technology. They are also one of the few ship classes outfitted with stealth technology (aside from the smaller Corvettes). Due the expense and advancement in both sensor, lasers and nonlinear line of sight weapons.(i.e. missiles and railguns) Destroyers will be the only large non carrier surface combatant that will survive late into and long after the 21st century, unless the navy can afford expensive cruisers.

*'''Cruiser''': Smaller than a battleship, the cruiser is used mainly for air defense and shore bombardment. Early cruisers were referred to as Unarmored or Armored cruisers with an obvious distinction. After the HMS Dreadnought revolutionized naval warfare two types of cruiser emerged: Light cruisers with main gun calibers below 203mm/8 inches, mostly for escorting battleships and carriers, providing anti-air fire; and heavy cruisers with 203mm or greater guns to act as line ships not quite up to the snuff of duking it out with battleships but quite capable of mauling destroyers and other cruisers, with increasing anti-air capability as World War 2 went on. The last all gun cruiser was heavy cruiser USS Newport News. After the (mostly) retirement of the battleship, the Cruiser is the largest warship still in use (not counting Supercarriers) in the form of Guided Missile Cruisers. As there is still no better way to deal with targets on land, sea or in the air by firing a crap-ton of rocket-propelled explosive ordinance at them, navies that can afford them build cruisers for this role. Another big role of a guided missile cruiser is air defense as they can fit huge radars and massive amounts of AA missiles.  

*'''Q-Ship''': A warship disguised as a merchant vessel in order to lure enemy submarines.

*'''Battleship''': The typical gun-armed capital ship of a navy and the former symbol of power for any nation. Battleships are basically floating artillery batteries, armed with a plethora of huge multi-barreled cannons (typically in the 150mm range or larger, main batteries topping out at the three triple 46cm Yamato-class), smaller naval guns, and AA batteries. They were extensively used in WW1 and up to WW2, where even in the rising age of aircraft carriers: they still decided a good chunk of battles all over the world thanks to the power of their big guns. Post-WW2 however, and battleships started to decline in importance. Carriers basically do a better job at long-range saturated bombardment (and could do more than that as well), and a destroyer, submarine, or cruiser armed with rockets and cruise missiles can provide quick and close fire support at a fraction of the cost. They continued to serve well into the Cold War, the most famous of which was the USS Iowa shelling the ever-loving shit out of Iraqi coastal assets during the Gulf War, even receiving a surrender through the targeting drone camera by Iraqi personnel waving white flags at it. Fast forward into the 21st century and Battleships have been phased out modern navies by the 2000s, with most being broken up for scrapping or used for weapons testing, while some of the more distinguished ones are preserved as inert museum ships open to the public (Such as the IJN Mikasa and the USS Iowa). While there are [[/pol/|some idiots]] who want to bring them back into service. It also would be prohibitively expensive. As there is no ammo for their guns, removing them for VLS would be a waste of time and their armor would not stand up to modern anti ship missiles, nor lasers and railguns currently in development. Battleships whether old or a completely new design are merely target practice for carrier launched aircraft and just about anything with a large number of missiles. Several proposals exist of building a mostly unmanned battleship sized Arsenal Ship loaded front to back with missile launchers.

*'''Battlecruiser''': A halfway step between battleships and cruisers. They were of similar size to Battleships, but made design tradeoffs that Battleships didn't. Typically this meant carrying similar guns and having equal or greater speed at the cost of armor, however many WW1 German ships carried battleship grade guns and armor at the expense of speed. Their traditional role was to outrun and destroy enemy frigates and older battleships, while the actual battleships did the bulk of fighting. Had a tendency to explode in line battles, which they were not meant to be in. The term "Battle cruiser" has seen a slight resurgence in use when describe the biggest combat ships afloat which are not carriers, but are also not quite the size of Battleships. The sole member of this category is the Kirov class battle cruiser. "Battle Cruiser" is a NATO designation, Russia/Soviet Union classifies it as "heavy nuclear-powered guided missile cruiser", the line between 'heavy cruiser' and 'battle cruiser' had always been a vague one, only really distinguishable through gun calibers and maybe armor. Guided missile battlecruisers are also, besides the increasingly aging and poorly maintained Kirov-class, not very popular in naval thinking like the proposed Arsenal ships.

*'''Dreadnought''': A group of battleships that used almost solely large calibre cannons for its armaments, rather than a mix of large, medium and light guns that were used by earlier warships. Named after HMS Dreadnought (literally meaning "fear nothing") which was the first "Dreadnought", the design was so revolutionary it pretty much made all previous warships redundant and all battleships are classified as Pre-Dreadnought and Post-Dreadnought ships. What made Dreadnoughts so good was that they had an "all big guns" design which not only increased its firepower, but also simplified both logistics and firing solution complexity, as all guns would have the same range and angle of fire (note that all big guns means the entire main battery is of the same caliber, not the secondary or tertiary batteries). This design gave the ships very good range which was complimented by the fact that dreadnoughts were also fast and well armoured, which meant that it could out range and out run the bigger warships, and if something was fast enough to catch up it wouldn't be able to kill it due to the strong armour. These were popular in WWI as many navies competed on who could build the most dreadnoughts, particularly Britain and Germany, in the Dreadnought Arms Race. Battlecruisers also spawned out of the dreadnought race as the corollary to the Dreadnought battleships by being fast enough to escape dreadnoughts while strong enough to kill cruisers and below, sparking the accompanying Battlecruiser Arms Race. The massive naval arms race was one of the causes of World War 1. The name "Dreadnoughts" eventually fell out of use after WW1 outside of Britain as pretty much all battleships used a similar design from then on out, practically all interwar and World War 2 battleship were made in the dreadnought configuration. The Washington Naval Treaty and it's restrictions created the treaty battleship, when the Treaty died in the 30's the fast battleship emerged. The Fast Battleship was the final evolution of the battleship and they were all eventually made obsolete as they were massively expensive and could be blown to bits by aircraft.

*'''Aircraft Carrier''': A giant floating aircraft strip, the very best in force projection a naval force can ask for. These ships need to be massive to give fighters enough runway space, even with specialized launching systems such as the CATOBAR catapult system. By no accident, these ships are often called "floating cities." Besides their physical size and large crew, they are high-endurance self-sufficient ships; many aircraft carriers are nuclear-powered, allowing them to endure long deployment without refuelling. Their aircraft also provide them with all they support assets they need, between strike capabilities and early warning craft to cargo transports and refuelling craft. Supercarriers are even more massive, carrying a plethora of aircraft. The carrier itself has little weapons outfitted, mostly point-defence guns and AA missiles/guns, relying entirely on its on-board aircraft for defence, but carriers are almost always escorted by smaller ships in combat to defend it against direct attack. Aircraft Carriers are currently the battleships of the modern era, as WW2 has demonstrated: whoever controls the air, controls the conflict. The plethora of aircraft the carrier has means its able to do just about anything to win the war: send scout craft to gather intel, fighter craft to take down enemy aircraft, air troop transports to get boots on the ground, or bombing craft to lay down precision/mass bombardment over a targeted area at very long distances. Helicopters are also very frequent aboard carriers, though pretty much all other modern naval warships carry helicopters as well. Modern carriers are hardly unarmed themselves. As an example, the Gerald R. Ford class has 12mm Machine Guns, 20mm Cannons, and Rim-116 missiles for self defense, along with two launchers for the new Sea Sparrow. Obviously carriers of the future will have hypersonic weapons (missiles or railguns) and directed energy weapons to protect and support both their fleet and aircraft. Carriers are divided into the following categories:
**'''Fleet Carrier''': Standard carrier designed to lead fleets.
**'''Light Carrier''': Cheaper but still designed for combat.
**'''Escort Carrier''': Converted merchantmen or printed out cheaply to provide convoy escorts, though any aircraft is just as deadly as the same type launched from a full fleet carrier.
**'''Supercarrier''': A fleet carrier built as big as possible to carry an air armada. Can receive even cargo planes.
**'''Helicopter Carrier''': A carrier primarily designed to carry helicopters and can also accommodate STOVL and VTOL jets.

*'''Amphibious Assault Ship''': These look like small aircraft carriers, but realistically they can only deploy helicopters and VTOL fighter jets. However, they can also deploy boats and amphibious craft, as they can include a sea deck below. Just like their bigger sisters they carry little weapons, but it is their payload in helo's or smaller boats that does the job indirectly. Recently, pioneered by Turkey's TCG Anadolu, they started to house drones in a relatively cheap platform.

*'''Attack Submarine''': Submarines designed specifically to attack enemy ships and subs using torpedoes, though they may also be used as covert escort vessels or blockade runners. These optimize speed and stealth, and are among the smallest subs. The first submarines, such as the German U-Boat, were diesel-electric and thus could not spend much time underwater due to the need for fresh oxygen to power their engines. Nuclear power solved this problem, allowing submarines to spend far more time underwater, although nuclear reactors are still somewhat noisy and better suited to long range patrols. Defensive submarines such as modern German and Japanese designs tend to be extremely quiet electric hybrids with spaceship-like fuel cells. Most modern attack subs can also launch missiles out of torpedo tubes.
*'''Cruise Missile Submarine''': Submarines designed mainly to fire long-range cruise missiles, though some were converted from Ballistic Missile Subs as part of nuclear disarmament. The Ohio class has 154 Tomahawks per vessel. Basically [[Dakka|More Dakka]] in the form missiles, and part of the reason why nobody builds big gun ships to hit the shore anymore: anyone who could afford that can instead slam a couple dozen cruise missiles on precision strikes.
*'''Ballistic Missile Submarine''': Submarines used in strategic nuclear warfare rather than direct combat. Think of "The Hunt for Red October" on why this is a big deal. These subs are sometimes also called "Boomers", and since they’re armed with nukes the reason should be self-apparent. Theoretically they can fire conventional ballistic missiles but there isn't a lot of point in using those except as hard to aim but difficult to intercept platforms, with only China really experimenting with shore launched anti-ship ballistic missiles so far.

{{Vehicle Warfare}}